


In the Jungle

by eleutheria_has_won



Category: The Underland Chronicles - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Trauma, mild insanity, the Jungle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-24
Updated: 2014-07-24
Packaged: 2018-02-10 07:00:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2015490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eleutheria_has_won/pseuds/eleutheria_has_won
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"So it was that [they] surrendered themselves to the terrible phantasms of the dream-forest."  -- Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children, page 417</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Jungle

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt was: "forgotten relative"

The heat is the most punishing thing about the jungle, closely followed by the scarcity of untainted water. Unseen eyes set his skin crawling the second he stepped over the first glowing stream, and it hasn’t stopped yet. 

Hamnet has had many names in his life. Son of Solovet. Son of Vikus. General of Regalia.

Murderer.

Three years ago, he came here to the Jungle, running from his sins, and now he has another name. That poor, mad killer. Given to him by the various speaking creatures who creep in the Jungle’s shadows, and there are many of them. Far more than he expected, in a land famed for being toxic and inhospitable. Tribes of nibblers, scattered crawlers, an exiled breed of spinner or two, all of them he has seen at a distance and heard the mutterings of, and even stranger things besides, creatures of which he has no previous notions. 

(He is starting to wonder if that strange little girl, she wasn’t so crazy after all. Or at least, no more than he is. Which isn’t saying much.)

Three years. Three years he has been here. The faces of his family linger in stages. His little niece’s face, all but gone. His sister’s remains, but her husband’s face is just as gone as her daughter’s. His mother’s, hatefully, is crystal clear. Memories of better times that once chattered past his ears, urging him to go back, stop this nonsense, return _home_ , they are... not silent. Maybe they never will be. But they’re quieter, whispering instead of screaming.

(Memories of worse times still wake him screaming in the night.)

He wonders if he’s been forgotten, yet.


End file.
